


Death in Three Aspects

by Sheliak



Category: Six Ages (Video Games), Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind (Video Game)
Genre: Death, Drabble Sequence, F/M, Glorantha - Freeform, Gods, Hyalorings, King of Dragon Pass elements, Mythology - Freeform, Orlanthi, Present Tense, Samnali, Triple Drabble, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-08 04:54:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20316826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheliak/pseuds/Sheliak
Summary: Death has many faces.





	Death in Three Aspects

To the Riders, death is the outsider, the interloper, born of the world's doom. He is Erissa's beloved, and she is his, but she will never be his wife: cannot, for her nature forbids it. The gentle White Lady loves everyone and raises hand to none: how could she ally herself with her opposite, who means to freeze the world, leave it barren and empty? It isn’t strange, of course, that she loves even her one enemy: it is her nature to love, as it is to heal. But Death is, in the end, the only being she cannot help. 

To the Wheels, death is the seducer, the betrayer, the trickster who brings disorder but destroys himself in the end. Wheel men say that Erissa, female and weak, gave way to him; Wheel women say that he is the suitor no girl should trust, and the reason the family and clan must arrange marriages, so that he has no chance to work his wiles on the innocent again. Both say that she passed her skill on to her son Erildar, who then tricked his father into telling him his secrets as well. Healing, they say, would not exist without death.

To the Rams, death has a seat on the ring. Grim Humakt was Umath's son, once, and he was initiated with Orlanth and Urox and the rest. He fought beside them, until Eurmal took up the sword and Humakt took it from him in turn. Then, so it could not be taken again, he became it. With that act he cut all ties to kin and clan. But though he left the Storm Tribe, he came to it again as a stranger, and a new place was created for him. Orlanth named him champion and oathkeeper, and so he remains.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "relationships with death". 
> 
> Based primarily on _Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind_, with some influence from _King of Dragon Pass_ and other Glorantha canons.


End file.
